The summer of 2024 was the hottest eighth since 1900. In France, the heat killed more than 3,700 people during the summer of 2024, including three quarters aged 75 and over, the public health agency announced on Tuesday, March 11.
The estimate of the deaths linked to heat – which is precisely 3,711 deaths – concerns all summer 2024, from 1er June to September 15, and not just the episodes of heat wave stricto sensu, specifies in a public health press release France.
Warm from a meteorological point of view, the two previous summers had killed more: 5,167 heat-related deaths had been recorded in 2023, a year marked by episodes of heat wave later than normal, and 10,420 in 2022, where COVVI-19 had been able to increase the vulnerability of certain people.
The Alpes-Maritimes at the top of the number of heat waves
“Since 2015, in continuity linked to climate change, we have now have very hot summers, marked by heat waves, with heat exhibitions throughout the territory”explained Guillaume Boulanger, researcher at Public Health France. On the geographical level, “If the Atlantic facade and Ile-de-France were partly spared, the southeast quarter of the country was again very exposed to heat phenomena”he observes.
The main heat wave, from July 28 to August 14, with two successive intensity peaks, concerned 40 % of the population and affected Corsica and 43 departments in the south-east of the metropolis. The Pyrénées-Orientales had already been struck by a heat wave from July 23 to 25.
The Alpes-Maritimes and the Pyrénées-Orientales are the two departments that have known the most heat wave, fourteen and thirteen days respectively. People aged 75 and over, “Less functional perspiration regulation system”represent three quarters of deaths in the summer of 2024.